The Stage Itself Is Darkened

by Colin Herd

We mime sexual attraction at points, looking deeply into each others' eyes; I am surprised you can focus on anything but my lemon-coloured shorts. I am the boy and you are the man which means you wear bell-bottomed trousers and have a shaved head. The man has a chicken which stuns me into a kind of frenzy; it flutters, the most graceful wing-beat I have ever seen, and the most insistent, and the most piercing, and the most grave. I am excitable of course, feeling invincible in lemon as usual, but the boy slowly takes the chicken and deliberately squats with it between his thighs, squeezing it to death. The man watches from the shadows. (Not everyone believes the chicken dies.)